My hunch is that the age of tallest building has more to do with one of two other things than with anything related to urbanism:
1) the growth of environmental law, which can be used to stop large public projects.
2) (I realize I'm courting controversy with this one) the increasing presence of women in American public life. Women on average don't seem to care as much about breaking records / creating superlatives as men do, though of course there are exceptions.
I'd guess it might be insightful to search for count of structures over a specific height threshold (Arlington and Fairfax County property records might make this relatively easy).
Last thing: "how old is your longest (bridge)" is another great comparison. Here's a decent list ( https://www.ratepunk.com/blog/post/longest-bridges-in-the-us ), and 1980 jumps out to me as a cutoff year. All but one* of the listed bridges built after 1980 are replacements for obsolete / damaged earlier bridges.
*The sole exception is the Virginia Dare Memorial Bridge linking mainland North Carolina with the Outer Banks, which likely had a very unusual combination of extreme support from local commercial interests and minimal opposition from environmentalists & NIMBYs.
Fresno's tallest building was built in 1925, which says less about attitude towards growth and more about ability to grow and what sort of companies drive the economy.
Maybe there's something symbolic but since each 'tallest' building is a sample size n=1, there's not really statistically significant and often easily explainable by factors having nothing to do with urbanism or "Deleted Scenes" type consideration.
For example NYC's tallest building was of course just a big national FU to Al Qaeda that even NIMBYism couldn't override (although the fact that it took 13 years to build is telling). And lack of construction of trophy towers post-COVID likely reflects the shift to hybrid work more than any attitude towards housing.
Practically speaking, I'm definitely in the "skyscrapers are gross" camp-- except for the fact that Chicago (in many ways), in many ways, invented the skyscraper, and it's part of the city's pride.
Sixth & Guadalupe is half office, half residential—the office portion was pre-leased by Meta, which has decided not to occupy the space. Meanwhile, the tallest building under construction in Austin, the Waterline supertall which broke ground in 2022, will have some office in its podium but will be mostly hotel and condos in the tower. We have a bunch of other tall towers going up downtown, the majority of which are also residential, but a lot of projects of all types that were announced in early 2022 have stalled. I suspect, long-term, that demand for downtown living will be strong. As an example of the current situation, the proposed (2022) supertall Wilson apartment tower design was cut in half in 2023, and after clearing the site last year there's been no further progress.
I think this metric (fun as it is) says much more about commercial development in central business districts than it does about the housing market. Of course, the potential tallest skyscraper in, um, Oklahoma City may cause us all to have to re-evaluate your theory...
HG Wells has a pearl of wisdom about this when he characterized the economic forces exerted on cities in the early 20th-c as "forces centrifugal and centripetal." He imagines the business imperative of locating downtown as concentrating its mass and the lighter residential uses hurled and scattered to the perimeter. Ironically, the urge to concentrate commerce in central locations was a complementary strategy to suburban living. Therefore, tall buildings downtown.
I think the lack of recently constructed tall buildings says more about the state of corporate offices than it does about housing development. Pre-pandemic, some companies were favoring horizontal spaces that they felt better accommodated open floor plans. The addition of widespread remote work has accelerated that trend. It used to be that the newest tall building in any city would be a bank tower.
Now, it's more likely to be a high-rise condominium. That said, living in skyscrapers is still a niche lifestyle. The solutions to housing affordability need to include more vertical development, but a lot of that may be in the form of shorter mid-rise buildings near high-capacity transit. There will also need to be a lot of additional housing in the form of accessory dwelling units, duplexes, and similar "missing middle" options.
My hunch is that the age of tallest building has more to do with one of two other things than with anything related to urbanism:
1) the growth of environmental law, which can be used to stop large public projects.
2) (I realize I'm courting controversy with this one) the increasing presence of women in American public life. Women on average don't seem to care as much about breaking records / creating superlatives as men do, though of course there are exceptions.
I'd guess it might be insightful to search for count of structures over a specific height threshold (Arlington and Fairfax County property records might make this relatively easy).
Last thing: "how old is your longest (bridge)" is another great comparison. Here's a decent list ( https://www.ratepunk.com/blog/post/longest-bridges-in-the-us ), and 1980 jumps out to me as a cutoff year. All but one* of the listed bridges built after 1980 are replacements for obsolete / damaged earlier bridges.
*The sole exception is the Virginia Dare Memorial Bridge linking mainland North Carolina with the Outer Banks, which likely had a very unusual combination of extreme support from local commercial interests and minimal opposition from environmentalists & NIMBYs.
When was the last time that a "tallest" building was its city's best building?
Gotta admit, I'm not seeing much correlation here.
Fresno's tallest building was built in 1925, which says less about attitude towards growth and more about ability to grow and what sort of companies drive the economy.
Maybe there's something symbolic but since each 'tallest' building is a sample size n=1, there's not really statistically significant and often easily explainable by factors having nothing to do with urbanism or "Deleted Scenes" type consideration.
For example NYC's tallest building was of course just a big national FU to Al Qaeda that even NIMBYism couldn't override (although the fact that it took 13 years to build is telling). And lack of construction of trophy towers post-COVID likely reflects the shift to hybrid work more than any attitude towards housing.
When was the last time that a "tallest" building was its city's best building?
Practically speaking, I'm definitely in the "skyscrapers are gross" camp-- except for the fact that Chicago (in many ways), in many ways, invented the skyscraper, and it's part of the city's pride.
Sixth & Guadalupe is half office, half residential—the office portion was pre-leased by Meta, which has decided not to occupy the space. Meanwhile, the tallest building under construction in Austin, the Waterline supertall which broke ground in 2022, will have some office in its podium but will be mostly hotel and condos in the tower. We have a bunch of other tall towers going up downtown, the majority of which are also residential, but a lot of projects of all types that were announced in early 2022 have stalled. I suspect, long-term, that demand for downtown living will be strong. As an example of the current situation, the proposed (2022) supertall Wilson apartment tower design was cut in half in 2023, and after clearing the site last year there's been no further progress.
Oops! I got the Waterline hotel and office pieces backwards. The hotel is in the podium, and the office will be in the lower portion of the tower.
2 thoughts:
* would it make sense to do DC metro. Every time I go to IAD I am amazed at how tall Reston is getting.
* it would be interesting to see a plot of how the tallest buildings get superceded, probably shows some interesting building booms.
I think this metric (fun as it is) says much more about commercial development in central business districts than it does about the housing market. Of course, the potential tallest skyscraper in, um, Oklahoma City may cause us all to have to re-evaluate your theory...
HG Wells has a pearl of wisdom about this when he characterized the economic forces exerted on cities in the early 20th-c as "forces centrifugal and centripetal." He imagines the business imperative of locating downtown as concentrating its mass and the lighter residential uses hurled and scattered to the perimeter. Ironically, the urge to concentrate commerce in central locations was a complementary strategy to suburban living. Therefore, tall buildings downtown.
I think the lack of recently constructed tall buildings says more about the state of corporate offices than it does about housing development. Pre-pandemic, some companies were favoring horizontal spaces that they felt better accommodated open floor plans. The addition of widespread remote work has accelerated that trend. It used to be that the newest tall building in any city would be a bank tower.
Now, it's more likely to be a high-rise condominium. That said, living in skyscrapers is still a niche lifestyle. The solutions to housing affordability need to include more vertical development, but a lot of that may be in the form of shorter mid-rise buildings near high-capacity transit. There will also need to be a lot of additional housing in the form of accessory dwelling units, duplexes, and similar "missing middle" options.